Wednesday, 29 January 2014

PETE SEEGER

PETE SEEGER ~~ YOUR DREAMS HAVE CHANGED THE WORLD …

Moyers Moment (1994): Pete Seeger on What it Takes to Change the World

During the Great Depression, Pete Seeger and his friend Woody Guthrie traveled together from town to town, Seeger with his banjo and Guthrie with his guitar, playing music in exchange for meals. Later, Seeger came to New York where he played in support of unions and the fight against fascism, joined the communist movement and left it again. Repeatedly throughout his life, and especially during the McCarthy era, Seeger’s folk songs attracted the attention of those in power who branded Seeger a dangerous figure.

“All I know,” he says, “is that throughout history, the leaders of countries have been very particular about what songs they want sung, so some people, beside me, must think songs do something.”

Appleseed Recordings and Red House Records have released "Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger." Celebrating the remarkable career and profound impact of folk singer and political activist Pete Seeger, an unprecedented assemblage of performers that spans generations and international borders appears on this extraordinary double CD, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," released by Appleseed Recording, an independent label affiliated with Red House Records. Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Billy Bragg, Judy Collins, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Ani DiFranco are among the performers on the CD who join actor Tim Robbins, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel, and politically active musicians from Bosnia, Ireland, Scotland, England, and Canada. All acknowledge their debt to Seeger by performing songs or poems he has written or sung over the past half century to champion the labor movement, peace, civil rights, and the environment. Seeger himself concludes the album with the debut of a new song, "And Still I Am Searching," which he completed last year. The fiftieth anniversary of his legendary folk group, the Weavers, is also celebrated on the disc by a reissue of their classic "Wimoweh," as well as a performance by Seeger's former Weavers colleague Ronnie Gilbert of a new version of "Empty Pocket Blues." In fact, thirty-seven of the thirty-nine songs on the CD are new recordings!Among the most moving of the thirty-nine numbers on the CD is a performance of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" by Belfast-based Tommy Sands, whose work embodies the Pete Seeger spirit in Northern Ireland; Dolores Keane, another legendary Irish singer and former member of DeDannan; a ten-member chorus of Irish children, half Catholic and half Protestant; and cellist Vedran Smailovic, who became a symbol of the Bosnian civil war when he played his cello in the Sarajevo town square while bombing was underway. Asked by a CNN reporter if he was crazy for playing the cello while bombs were falling, Smailovic replied "You ask me 'am I crazy for playing the cello,' why do you not ask if they are crazy for shelling Sarajevo?"Bruce Springsteen performs a stirring rendition of "We Shall Overcome;" Tim Robbins, backed by a large children's chorus, sings a dramatic version of "All My Children of the Sun;" Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt sing "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine;" and Studs Terkel—at 85, the oldest performer on the discs—reads "Oh Sacred World" and "Blessed Be the Nation," a poem written by Seeger and Jim Musselman, the founder of Appleseed Recordings. Dick Gaughan of Scotland sings Seeger's anti-Vietnam War song, "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy;" Billy Bragg of England sings "My Father's Mansions;" and Bruce Cockburn of Canada sings "Turn, Turn, Turn." Among some of the other performers and the songs they sing are the Indigo Girls ("Letter to Eve"); Judy Collins ("Oh Had I a Golden Thread"); Ani DiFranco ("My Name is Lisa Kalvelage"); Peter, Paul and Mary ("All Mixed Up"); Richie Havens ("Of Time and Rivers Flowing"); Odetta ("One Grain of Sand"); Nancy Griffith ("If I Had a Hammer"); and Donovan ("Rainbow Race").

Pete SeegerFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about a person who has recently died. Some information, such as the circumstances of the person's death and surrounding events, may change as more facts become known.

Charles and Constance divorced when Pete was seven, and in 1932 Charles married his composition student and assistant, Ruth Crawford Seeger, now considered by many to be one of the most importantmodernistcomposers of the 20th century.[11] Deeply interested in folk music, Ruth had contributed musical arrangements to Carl Sandburg's extremely influential folk song anthology the American Songbag (1927) and later created significant original settings for eight of Sandburg's poems.[12] Pete's eldest brother, Charles Seeger III, was a radio astronomer, and his next older brother, John Seeger, taught in the 1950s at the Dalton School in Manhattan and was the principal from 1960 to 1976 atFieldston Lower School in the Bronx.[13] Pete's uncle, Alan Seeger, a noted poet ("I Have a Rendezvous with Death"), had been one of the first American soldiers to be killed in the World War I. All four of Pete's half siblings from his father's second marriage – Margaret (Peggy), Mike, Barbara, and Penelope (Penny) – became folk singers. Peggy Seeger, a well-known performer in her own right, was married for many years to British folk singer and activist Ewan MacColl. Mike Seeger was a founder of the New Lost City Ramblers, one of whose members, John Cohen, married Pete's half-sister Penny (herself a talented singer who died young); Barbara Seeger joined her siblings in recording folk songs for children. In 1935, Pete attended Camp Rising Sun, an international leadership camp held every summer in upstate New York that influenced his life's work. He visited most recently in 2012.

In 1943, Pete married Toshi-Aline Ōta, whom he credited with being the support that helped make the rest of his life possible. The couple remained married until Toshi's death in July 2013.[14] Their first child, Peter Ōta Seeger, was born in 1944 and died at six months, while Pete was deployed overseas. Pete never saw him.[15] They went on to have three more children: Daniel (an accomplished photographer and filmmaker), Mika (a potter and muralist), and Tinya (a potter), as well as grandchildren Tao (a musician), Cassie (an artist), Kitama Cahill-Jackson (a filmmaker), Moraya (a graduate student married to the NFL player Chris DeGeare), Penny, and Isabelle. Tao is a folk musician in his own right, who sings and plays guitar, banjo, and harmonica with the Mammals. Kitama Jackson is a documentary filmmaker who was associate producer of the PBS documentary Pete Seeger: The Power of Song.

When asked about his religious or spiritual views, Seeger replied: "I feel most spiritual when I’m out in the woods. I feel part of nature. Or looking up at the stars. [I used to say] I was an atheist. Now I say, it’s all according to your definition of God. According to my definition of God, I’m not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes I’m looking at God. Whenever I’m listening to something I’m listening to God.".[16] He was a member of a Unitarian Universalist Church in New York.[17]

Seeger lived in Beacon, New York. He remained engaged politically and maintained an active lifestyle in the Hudson Valley region of New York throughout his life. He and Toshi purchased their land in 1949 and lived there first in a trailer, then in a log cabin they built themselves. Toshi died in Beacon on July 9, 2013[14][18] and Pete died in New York City on January 27, 2014.[19]Musical careerEarly work

At four, Seeger was sent away to boarding school, but came home two years later, when his parents learned the school had failed to inform them he had contracted scarlet fever.[20] He attended first and second grades in Nyack, New York, where his mother lived, before entering boarding school inRidgefield, Connecticut.[21] Despite being classical musicians, his parents did not press him to play an instrument. On his own, the otherwise bookish and withdrawn boy gravitated to the ukulele, becoming adept at entertaining his classmates with it, while laying the basis for his subsequent remarkable audience rapport. At thirteen, Seeger enrolled in the Avon Old Farms prep school in Avon, Connecticutfrom which he graduated in 1936. He was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the George E. Jonas Foundation's international summer leadership program. During the summer of 1936, while traveling with his father and stepmother, Pete heard the five-string banjo for the first time at the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in western North Carolina near Asheville, organized by local folklorist, lecturer, and traditional music performer Bascom Lamar Lunsford, whom Charles Seeger had hired for Farm Resettlement music projects.[22] The festival took place in a covered baseball field. There the Seegers

watched square-dance teams from Bear Wallow, Happy Hollow, Cane Creek, Spooks Branch, Cheoah Valley, Bull Creek, and Soco Gap; heard the five-string banjo playerSamantha Bumgarner; and family string bands, including a group of Indians from the Cherokee reservation who played string instruments and sang ballads. They wandered among the crowds who camped out at the edge of the field, hearing music being made there as well. As Lunsford’s daughter would later recall, those country people "held the riches that Dad had discovered. They could sing, fiddle, pick the banjos, and guitars with traditional grace and style found nowhere else but deep in the mountains. I can still hear those haunting melodies drift over the ball park."[23]

For the Seegers, experiencing the beauty of this music firsthand was a "conversion experience". Pete was deeply affected and, after learning basic strokes from Lunsford, spent much of the next four years trying to master the five-string banjo.[23] The teenage Seeger also sometimes accompanied his parents to regular Saturday evening gatherings at the Greenwich Village loft of painter and art teacher Thomas Hart Benton and his wife Rita. Benton, a lover of Americana, played "Cindy" and "Old Joe Clark" with his students Charlie and Jackson Pollock; friends from the "hillbilly" recording industry; as well as avant-garde composers Carl Ruggles and Henry Cowell. It was at one of Benton's parties that Pete heard "John Henry" for the first time.[24] Seeger enrolled at Harvard College on a partial scholarship, but as he became increasingly involved with politics and folk music, his grades suffered and he lost his scholarship. He dropped out of college in 1938.[25] He dreamed of a career in journalism and also took courses in art. His first musical gig was leading students in folk singing at the Dalton School, where his aunt was principal. He polished his performance skills during a summer stint of touring New York State with The Vagabond Puppeteers (Jerry Oberwager, 22; Mary Wallace, 22; and Harriet Holtzman, 23), a travelingpuppet theater "inspired by rural education campaigns of post-revolutionary Mexico".[26] One of their shows coincided with a strike by dairy farmers. The group reprised its act in October in New York City. An article in the October 2, 1939, Daily Worker reported on the Puppeteers' six-week tour this way:

During the entire trip the group never ate once in a restaurant. They slept out at night under the stars and cooked their own meals in the open, very often they were the guests of farmers. At rural affairs and union meetings, the farm women would bring "suppers" and would vie with each other to see who could feed the troupe most, and after the affair the farmers would have earnest discussions about who would have the honor of taking them home for the night.

"They fed us too well," the girls reported. "And we could live the entire winter just by taking advantage of all the offers to spend a week on the farm."

In the farmers' homes they talked about politics and the farmers’ problems, aboutantisemitism and Unionism, about war and peace and social security—"and always," the puppeteers report, "the farmers wanted to know what can be done to create a stronger unity between themselves and city workers. They felt the need of this more strongly than ever before, and the support of the CIO in their milk strike has given them a new understanding and a new respect for the power that lies in solidarity. One summer has convinced us that a minimum of organized effort on the part of city organizations—unions, consumers’ bodies, the American Labor Party and similar groups—can not only reach the farmers but weld them into a pretty solid front with city folks that will be one of the best guarantees for progress.[27]

That fall Seeger took a job in Washington, D.C., assisting Alan Lomax, a friend of his father's, at theArchive of American Folk Song of the Library of Congress. Seeger's job was to help Lomax sift through commercial "race" and "hillbilly" music and select recordings that best represented American folk music, a project funded by the music division of the Pan American Union (later the Organization of American States), of whose music division his father, Charles Seeger, was head (1938–53).[28] Lomax also encouraged Seeger's folk singing vocation, and Seeger was soon appearing as a regular performer on Alan Lomax and Nicholas Ray's weekly Columbia Broadcasting show Back Where I Come From (1940–41) alongside of Josh White, Burl Ives, Lead Belly, and Woody Guthrie (whom he had first met at Will Geer's Grapes of Wrath benefit concert for migrant workers on March 3, 1940). Back Where I Come From was unique in having a racially integrated cast, which made news when it performed in March 1941 at a command performance at the White House organized by Eleanor Roosevelt called "An Evening of Songs for American Soldiers,"[29] before an audience that included the Secretaries of War, Treasury, and the Navy, among other notables. The show was a success but was not picked up by commercial sponsors for nationwide broadcasting because of its integrated cast. During the war, Seeger also performed on nationwide radio broadcasts by Norman Corwin.Pete Seeger entertaining Eleanor Roosevelt(center), honored guest at a racially integrated Valentine's Day party marking the opening of a Canteen of the United Federal Labor, CIO, in then-segregated Washington, D.C. Photographed by Joseph Horne for the Office of War Information, 1944.[30]

As a self-described "split tenor" (between an alto and a tenor),[31] Pete Seeger was a founding member of two highly influential folk groups: The Almanac Singers andthe Weavers. The Almanac Singers, which Seeger co-founded in 1941 with Millard Lampell and Arkansas singer and activist Lee Hays, was a topical group, designed to function as a singing newspaper promoting the industrial unionization movement,[32] racial and religious inclusion, and other progressive causes. Its personnel included, at various times: Woody Guthrie,Bess Lomax Hawes, Sis Cunningham, Josh White, andSam Gary. As a controversial Almanac singer, the 21-year-old Seeger performed under the stage name "Pete Bowers" to avoid compromising his father's government career.

The Weavers' performing career was abruptly derailed in 1953 at the peak of their popularity when blacklisting prompted radio stations to refuse to play their records and all their bookings were canceled. They briefly returned to the stage, however, at a sold-out reunion at Carnegie Hall in 1955 and in a subsequent reunion tour, which produced a hit version of Merle Travis's "Sixteen Tons" as well as LPs of their concert performances. "Kumbaya," a Gullah black spiritual dating from slavery days, was also introduced to wide audiences by Pete Seeger and the Weavers (in 1959), becoming a staple of Boy and Girl Scout campfires.

In the late 1950s, the Kingston Trio was formed in direct imitation of (and homage to) the Weavers, covering much of the latter's repertoire, though with a more buttoned-down, uncontroversial, and mainstream collegiate persona. The Kingston Trio produced another phenomenal succession of Billboard chart hits and in its turn spawned a legion of imitators, laying the groundwork for the 1960s commercial folk revival.

In 1948, Seeger wrote the first version of his now-classic How to Play the Five-String Banjo, a book that many banjo players credit with starting them off on the instrument. He went on to invent the Long Neck orSeeger banjo. This instrument is three frets longer than a typical banjo, is slightly longer than a bass guitarat 25 frets, and is tuned a minor third lower than the normal 5-string banjo. Hitherto strictly limited to the Appalachian region, the five-string banjo became known nationwide as the American folk instrument par excellence, largely thanks to Seeger's championing of and improvements to it. According to an unnamed musician quoted in David King Dunaway's biography, "by nesting a resonant chord between two precise notes, a melody note and a chiming note on the fifth string", Pete Seeger "gentrified" the more percussive traditional Appalachian "frailing" style, "with its vigorous hammering of the forearm and its percussive rapping of the fingernail on the banjo head."[34] Although what Dunaway's informant describes is the age-old droned frailing style, the implication is that Seeger made this more acceptable to mass audiences by omitting some of its percussive complexities, while presumably still preserving the characteristic driving rhythmic quality associated with the style.

From the late 1950s on, Seeger also accompanied himself on the 12-string guitar, an instrument of Mexican origin that had been associated with Lead Belly, who had styled himself "the King of the 12-String Guitar". Seeger's distinctive custom-made guitars had a triangular soundhole. He combined the long scale length (approximately 28") and capo-to-key techniques that he favored on the banjo with a variant of drop-D (DADGBE) tuning, tuned two whole steps down with very heavy strings, which he played with thumb and finger picks.[35]Introduction of the "Steel Pan" to U.S. audiences

In 1956, then "Peter" Seeger (see film credits) and his wife, Toshi, traveled to Port of Spain, Trinidad, to seek out information on the steelpan, steel drum or "Ping-Pong" as it was sometimes called. The two searched out a local panyard director Isaiah, and proceeded to film the construction, tuning and playing of the then new, national instrument of Trinidad-Tobago. He was attempting to include the unique flavor of the steel pan into America Folk music.Later work2000–2009

On March 16, 2007, Pete Seeger, his sister Peggy, his brothers Mike and John, his wife Toshi, and other family members spoke and performed at a symposium and concert sponsored by the American Folklife Center in honor of the Seeger family, held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.,[36] where Pete Seeger had been employed by the Archive of American Folk Song 67 years earlier.

In September 2008, Appleseed Recordings released At 89, Seeger's first studio album in 12 years. On September 29, 2008, the 89-year-old singer-activist, once banned from commercial TV, made a rare national TV appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, singing "Take It From Dr. King".

On April 18, 2009, Pete Seeger performed in front of a small group of Earth Day celebrants at Teachers College in New York City. Among the songs he performed were "This Land is Your Land", "Take it From Dr. King", and "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain".

On October 21, 2011, at age 92, Pete Seeger was part of a solidarity march with Occupy Wall Street to Columbus Circle in New York City.[44] The march began with Seeger and fellow musicians exiting Symphony Space (95th and Broadway), where they had performed as part of a benefit for Seeger's Clearwater organization. Thousands of people crowded Pete Seeger by the time they reached Columbus Circle where he performed with his grandson, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, David Amram, and other celebrated musicians.[45] The event, promoted under the name #OccupyTheCircle, was LiveStreamed, and dubbed by some as "The Pete Seeger March".

On April 26, 2012, tens of thousands of Norwegians gathered in a show of unity at a rally in Oslo to sing Pete Seeger's song "My Rainbow Race" which a mass murderer had ridiculed as an example of "Marxist" brainwashing. The gunman was on trial for killing 77 people on July 22, 2011, insisting that his victims, who included 69 children, were traitors.[47] The song, which Seeger wrote in 1971 to protest the Vietnam War, has long been a popular children's song in Norway. Its lyrics include the lines:

Some want to take the easy wayPoisons, bombs! They think we need 'em.Don't they know you can't kill all the unbelievers.There's no shortcut to freedom.

Folksinger Lillebjørn Nilsen, author of the Norwegian version, led a crowd of over 40,000 in singing in both Norwegian and English. "I grew up with this song and have sung it to my child," said Lill Hjønnevåg, one of the organizers of the demonstration." Another organizer, blogger Bagnhild Holmås, said that although song might be Utopian, "the message is far from cheesy. ‘The killer’ thinks we're brainwashed anyway, but it's important to show our distance..." Culture ministers from Sweden, Denmark, the Faroe Islands andIceland joined in the singing.[48] From the U.S. Pete Seeger voiced his support of the event.

On July 18, 2012, Pete Seeger appeared at Bryant Park in New York City to sign copies of his new (2012) biography, Pete Seeger: His Life in His Own Words, written with Rob Rosenthal and Sam Rosenthal. He also spoke about his life and career.

On August 6, 2012, Pete Seeger appeared on the Colbert Report to speak with Stephen Colbert about his new book, Pete Seeger: His Life in His Own Words, and also to perform "Quite Early Morning" on the banjo.[49]

On November 24, 2012, Pete Seeger performed with Arlo Guthrie and the Guthrie family in a concert at Carnegie Hall. On December 14, 2012, Seeger performed, along with Harry Belafonte, Jackson Browne,Common and others, at a concert to bring awareness to the 37-year-long ordeal of Native American Activist Leonard Peltier. The concert was held at the Beacon Theater in New York City.[51]

On April 9, 2013, Hachette Audio Books issued an audiobook entitled Pete Seeger: The Storm King; Stories, Narratives, Poems. This two-CD spoken-word work was conceived of and produced by noted percussionist Jeff Haynes and presents Pete Seeger telling the stories of his life against a background of music performed by more than 40 musicians of varied genres.[52] The launch of the audiobook was held at the Dia:Beacon on April 11, 2013 to an enthusiastic audience of around two hundred people, and featured many of the musicians from the project (among them Samite, Dar Williams, Dave Eggar andRichie Stearns of the Horse Flies and Natalie Merchant) performing live under the direction of producer and percussionist Haynes.[53] April 15, 2013, Sirius XM Book Radio presented the Dia:Beacon concert as a special episode of "Cover to Cover Live with Maggie Linton and Kim Alexander" entitled "Pete Seeger:The Storm King and Friends."[54]

Pete Seeger died on January 27, 2014 at the age of 94. His grandson, Kitama Cahill-Jackson, said his grandfather died peacefully in his sleep around 9:30 p.m. at New York's Presbyterian Hospital, where he had been for six days. Family members were with him at the time of his death. Cahill-Jackson said Seeger was still as active as ever, out chopping wood ten days prior to his death.[58]

Response and reaction to Seeger's death quickly poured in. Bruce Springsteen said of Seeger's passing "I lost a great friend and a great hero last night, Pete Seeger" before performing "We Shall Overcome" while on tour in South Africa. President Barack Obama called Seeger "America's tuning fork" who believed in ""the power of song" to bring social change. "Over the years, Pete used his voice and his hammer to strike blows for worker's rights and civil rights; world peace and environmental conservation and he always invited us to sing along. For reminding us where we come from and showing us where we need to go, we will always be grateful to Pete Seeger. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to Pete's family and all those who loved him."[59]Activism1930s and 1940s

In 1936, at the age of 17, Pete Seeger joined the Young Communist League (YCL), then at the height of its popularity and influence. In 1942 he became a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) itself. He eventually "drifted away" (his words) from the Party in the late 1940s and 1950s.[60]

In the spring of 1941, the twenty-one-year-old Seeger performed as a member of the Almanac Singersalong with Millard Lampell, Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie, Butch and Bess Lomax Hawes, and Lee Hays. Seeger and the Almanacs cut several albums of 78s on Keynote and other labels, Songs for John Doe (recorded in late February or March and released in May 1941), the Talking Union, and an album each of sea chanteys and pioneer songs. Written by Millard Lampell, Songs for John Doe was performed by Lampell, Seeger, and Hays, joined by Josh White and Sam Gary. It contained lines such as, "It wouldn't be much thrill to die for Du Pont in Brazil," that were sharply critical of Roosevelt's unprecedented peacetime draft (enacted in September 1940). This anti-war/anti-draft tone reflected the Communist Party line after the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which maintained the war was "phony" and a mere pretext for big American corporations to get Hitler to attack Soviet Russia. Seeger has said he believed this line of argument at the time—as did many fellow members of the Young Communist League (YCL). Though nominally members of the Popular Front, which was allied with Roosevelt and more moderate liberals, the YCL's members still smarted from Roosevelt and Churchill's arms embargo to Loyalist Spain (which Roosevelt later called a mistake),[61] and the alliance frayed in the confusing welter of events.

A June 16, 1941, review in Time magazine, which under its owner, Henry Luce, had become very interventionist, denounced the Almanacs' John Doe, accusing it of scrupulously echoing what it called "the mendacious Moscow tune" that "Franklin Roosevelt is leading an unwilling people into a J. P. Morgan war." Eleanor Roosevelt, a fan of folk music, reportedly found the album "in bad taste," though President Roosevelt, when the album was shown to him, merely observed, correctly as it turned out, that few people would ever hear it. More alarmist was the reaction of eminent German-born Harvard Professor of Government Carl Joachim Friedrich, an adviser on domestic propaganda to the US military. In a review in the June 1941 Atlantic Monthly, entitled "The Poison in Our System," he pronouncedSongs for John Doe "...strictly subversive and illegal," "...whether Communist or Nazi financed," and "a matter for the attorney general," observing further that "mere" legal "suppression" would not be sufficient to counteract this type of populist poison,[62] the poison being folk music, and the ease with which it could be spread.[63]

At that point, the U.S. had not yet entered the war but was energetically re-arming. African Americanswere barred from working in defense plants, a situation that greatly angered both African Americans and white progressives. Black union leaders A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and A. J. Muste began planning a huge march on Washington to protest racial discrimination in war industries and to urge desegregation of the armed forces. The march, which many regard as the first manifestation of the Civil Rights Movement, was canceled after President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 (The Fair Employment Act) of June 25, 1941, barring discrimination in hiring by companies holding federal contracts for defense work. This Presidential act defused black anger considerably, although the United States Army still refused to desegregate, declining to participate in what it called "social engineering."[citation needed]

Roosevelt's order came three days after Hitler broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union, at which time the Communist Party quickly directed its members to get behind the draft and forbade participation in strikes for the duration of the war (angering some leftists). Copies of Songs for John Doe were removed from sale, and the remaining inventory destroyed, though a few copies may exist in the hands of private collectors.[64] The Almanac Singers' Talking Union album, on the other hand, was reissued as an LP by Folkways (FH 5285A) in 1955 and is still available. The following year the Almanacs issued Dear Mr. President, an album in support of Roosevelt and the war effort. The title song, "Dear Mr. President," was a solo by Pete Seeger, and its lines expressed his lifelong credo:

Now, Mr. President, / We haven't always agreed in the past, I know, / But that ain't at all important now. / What is important is what we got to do, / We got to lick Mr. Hitler, and until we do, / Other things can wait.//

Now, as I think of our great land . . . / I know it ain't perfect, but it will be someday, / Just give us a little time. // This is the reason that I want to fight, / Not 'cause everything's perfect, or everything's right. / No, it's just the opposite: I'm fightin' because / I want a better America, and better laws, / And better homes, and jobs, and schools, / And no more Jim Crow, and no more rules like / "You can't ride on this train 'cause you're a Negro," / "You can't live here 'cause you're a Jew,"/ "You can't work here 'cause you're a union man."//

So, Mr. President, / We got this one big job to do / That's lick Mr. Hitler and when we're through, / Let no one else ever take his place / To trample down the human race. / So what I want is you to give me a gun / So we can hurry up and get the job done.

Seeger's critics, however, have continued to bring up the Almanacs' repudiated Songs for John Doe. In 1942, a year after the John Doe album's brief appearance (and disappearance), the FBI decided that the now-pro-war Almanacs were still endangering the war effort by subverting recruitment. According to the New York World Telegram (February 14, 1942), Carl Friedrich's 1941 article "The Poison in Our System" was printed up as a pamphlet and distributed by the Council for Democracy (an organization that Friedrich and Henry Luce's right hand man, C. D. Jackson, Vice President of Time magazine, had founded "...to combat all the nazi, fascist, communist, pacifist..." antiwar groups in the United States).[65]and was shown to the Almanac's employers in order to keep them off the air. Coincidentally, defamatory reviews and gossip items appeared in New York newspapers whenever they performed in public, and ultimately the Almanacs had to disband.[66]

Seeger served in the US Army in the Pacific. He was trained as an airplane mechanic, but was reassigned to entertain the American troops with music. Later, when people asked him what he did in the war, he always answered "I strummed my banjo." After returning from service, Seeger and others established People's Songs, conceived as a nationwide organization with branches on both coasts and designed to "Create, promote and distribute songs of labor and the American People"[67] With Pete Seeger as its director, People's Songs worked for the 1948 presidential campaign of Roosevelt's former Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President, Henry A. Wallace, who ran as a third-party candidate on theProgressive Party ticket. Despite having attracted enormous crowds nationwide, however, Wallace won only in New York City, and, in the red-baiting frenzy that followed, he was excoriated (as Roosevelt had not been) for accepting the help in his campaign of Communists and fellow travelers such as Seeger and singer Paul Robeson.[68]Spanish Civil War songs

Seeger had been a fervent supporter of the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War. In 1943, with Tom Glazer and Bess and Baldwin Hawes, he recorded an album of 78s called Songs of the Lincoln Battalionon Moe Asch's Stinson label. This included such songs as "There's a Valley in Spain called Jarama," and "Viva la Quince Brigada." In 1960, this collection was re-issued by Moe Asch as one side of a Folkways LP called Songs of the Lincoln and International Brigades. On the other side was a reissue of the legendary Six Songs for Democracy (originally recorded in Barcelona in 1938 while bombs were falling), performed by Ernst Busch and a chorus of members of the Thälmann Battalion, made up of refugees from Nazi Germany. The songs were: "Moorsoldaten" ("Peat Bog Soldiers", composed by political prisoners of German concentration camps), "Die Thaelmann-Kolonne," "Hans Beimler," "Das Lied Von Der Einheitsfront" ("Song of The United Front" by Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht), "Der Internationalen Brigaden" ("Song Of The International Brigades"), and "Los cuatro generales" ("The Four Generals," known in English as "The Four Insurgent Generals").1950s and early 1960sPete Seeger in 1955

In the 1950s and, indeed, consistently throughout his life, Seeger continued his support of civil and labor rights, racial equality, international understanding, and anti-militarism (all of which had characterized the Wallace campaign) and he continued to believe that songs could help people achieve these goals. With the ever-growing revelations of Joseph Stalin's atrocities and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, however, he became increasingly disillusioned with Soviet Communism. In his PBS biography, Seeger said he "drifted away" from the CPUSA beginning in 1949 but remained friends with some who did not leave it, though he argued with them about it.[69][70]

On August 18, 1955, Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before theHouse Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Alone among the many witnesses after the 1950 conviction and imprisonment of the Hollywood Ten for contempt of Congress, Seeger refused to plead the Fifth Amendment (which asserted that his testimony might be self incriminating) and instead (as the Hollywood Ten had done) refused to name personal and political associations on the grounds that this would violate his First Amendment rights: "I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this."[71] Seeger's refusal to testify led to a March 26, 1957, indictment for contempt of Congress; for some years, he had to keep the federal government apprised of where he was going any time he left the Southern District of New York. He was convicted in a jury trial of contempt of Congress in March 1961, and sentenced to 10 years in jail (to be served simultaneously), but in May 1962 an appeals court ruled the indictment to be flawed and overturned his conviction.[72][73]

In 1960, the San Diego school board told him that he could not play a scheduled concert at a high school unless he signed an oath pledging that the concert would not be used to promote a communist agenda or an overthrow of the government. Seeger refused, and the American Civil Liberties Union obtained aninjunction against the school district, allowing the concert to go on as scheduled. In February 2009, the San Diego School District officially extended an apology to Seeger for the actions of their predecessors.[74]Vietnam War era

A longstanding opponent of the arms race and of the Vietnam War, Seeger satirically attacked then-President Lyndon Johnson with his 1966 recording, on the album Dangerous Songs!?, of Len Chandler's children's song, "Beans in My Ears". Beyond Chandler's lyrics, Seeger said that "Mrs. Jay's little son Alby" had "beans in his ears," which, as the lyrics imply,[75] ensures that a person does not hear what is said to them. To those opposed to continuing the Vietnam War, the phrase implied that "Alby Jay", a loose pronunciation of Johnson's nickname "LBJ," did not listen to anti-war protests as he too had "beans in his ears".

Seeger attracted wider attention starting in 1967 with his song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy", about acaptain—referred to in the lyrics as "the big fool"—who drowned while leading a platoon on maneuvers inLouisiana during World War II. In the face of arguments with the management of CBS about whether the song's political weight was in keeping with the usually light-hearted entertainment of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the final lines were "Every time I read the paper/those old feelings come on/We are waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says to push on." The lyrics could be interpreted as an allegory of Johnson as the "big fool" and the Vietnam War as the foreseeable danger. Although the performance was cut from the September 1967 show,[76] after wide publicity[77] it was broadcast when Seeger appeared again on the Smothers' Brothers show in the following January.[78]

At the November 15, 1969, Vietnam Moratorium March on Washington, DC, Seeger led 500,000 protesters in singing John Lennon's song "Give Peace a Chance" as they rallied across from the White House. Seeger's voice carried over the crowd, interspersing phrases like, "Are you listening, Nixon?" between the choruses of protesters singing, "All we are saying ... is give peace a chance".[79]

In the documentary film The Power of Song, Seeger mentions that he and his family visited North Vietnam in 1972.[81]Environmentalism

Seeger was involved in the environmental organization Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, which he co-founded in 1966. This organization has worked since then to highlight pollution in the Hudson River and worked to clean it. As part of that effort, the sloopClearwater was launched in 1969 with its inaugural sail down from Maine to South Street Seaport Museum in New York City, and thence to the Hudson River.[82]Amongst the inaugural crew was Don McLean, who co-edited the book Songs and Sketches of the First Clearwater Crew, with sketches by Thomas B. Allen for which Seeger wrote the foreword.[83] Seeger and McLean sang "Shenandoah" on the 1974 Clearwater album. The sloop regularly sails the river with volunteer and professional crew members, primarily conducting environmental education programs for school groups. The Great Hudson River Revival (aka Clearwater Festival) is an annual two-day music festival held on the banks of the Hudson at Croton Point Park. This festival grew out of early fundraising concerts arranged by Seeger and friends to raise money to pay for Clearwater's construction.Seeger's album Clearwater Classics. The title alludes to his work with the Clearwater group, working to clean theHudson River.

Seeger wrote and performed "That Lonesome Valley" about the then-polluted Hudson River in 1969, and his band members also wrote and performed songs commemorating the Clearwater.

The 106-foot-long sailboat, Clearwater, was built to conduct science-based environmental education aboard the sailing ship. Clearwater has education programs with many colleges and institutions, including SUNY New Paltz, and Pace University. The sail ship has become recognized for its role in the environmental movement. The Clearwater Festival brings Hudson Valley residents together to enjoy music, their cultural heritage, and support a cause.[84]Solo career and the folk song revival

By this time Seeger was a senior figure in the 1960s folk revival centered in Greenwich Village, as a longtime columnist in Sing Out!, the successor to the People's Songs Bulletin, and as a founder of the topical Broadside magazine. To describe the new crop of politically committed folk singers, he coined the phrase "Woody's children", alluding to his associate and traveling companion, Woody Guthrie, who by this time had become a legendary figure. This urban folk-revival movement, a continuation of the activist tradition of the 1930s and 1940s and of People's Songs, used adaptations of traditional tunes and lyrics to effect social change, a practice that goes back to the Industrial Workers of the World or Wobblies'Little Red Song Book, compiled by Swedish-born union organizer Joe Hill (1879–1915). (The Little Red Song Book had been a favorite of Woody Guthrie's, who was known to carry it around.)

Pete Seeger toured Australia in 1963. His single "Little Boxes", written by Malvina Reynolds, was number one in the nation's Top 40s. That tour sparked a folk boom throughout the country at a time when post Kennedy assassination popular musical tastes competed between folk, the surfing craze and the British rock boom which gave the world the Beatles, The Rolling Stones among others. Folk clubs sprung up all over the nation, folk performers were accepted in established venues and Australian performers singing Australian folk songs many of their own composing, emerged in concert and festivals, on television and on recordings and overseas performers were encouraged to tour Australia. In 1993 the Australian singer/playwright Maurie Mulheron assembled a musical biography of Seeger's, and friends', work in a stage production One Word ... WE!. It enjoyed a long and sold-out season at the New Theatre in the inner Sydney suburb of Newtown. It was reprised in 2000 and most recently at the Tom Mann Theatre, a Trade Union-owned and operated theatre in Surry Hills, also in inner Sydney, on June 12, 13 and 14, 2009.

A DVD of Seeger's 1963 Melbourne Town Hall concert has been released by The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

In November 1976 Seeger wrote and recorded the anti-death penalty song "Delbert Tibbs" about then death-row inmate Delbert Tibbs, who was later exonerated. Seeger wrote the music and selected the words from poems written by Tibbs.[88]Seeger at 86 on the cover of Sing Out!(Summer 2005), a magazine he helped found in 1950.

Pete Seeger was one of the earliest backers of Bob Dylan and was responsible for urging John Hammond to produce Dylan's first LP on Columbia and for inviting him to perform at the Newport Folk Festival, of which Seeger was a board member.[91] There was a widely repeated story that Seeger was so upset over the extremely loud amplified sound that Dylan, backed by members of the Butterfield Blues Band, brought into the 1965 Newport Folk Festival that he threatened to disconnect the equipment. There are multiple versions of what went on, some fanciful. What is certain is that tensions had been running high between Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, and Festival Board members (who besides Seeger also included Theodore Bikel, Bruce Jackson, Alan Lomax, festival MC Peter Yarrow, and George Wein) over the scheduling of performers and other matters. Two days earlier there had been a scuffle and brief exchange of blows between Grossman and Alan Lomax; and the Board, in an emergency session, had voted to ban Grossman from the grounds, but had backed off when George Wein pointed out that Grossman also managed highly popular draws Odetta and Peter, Paul, and Mary.[92] Seeger has been portrayed as a folk "purist" who was one of the main opponents to Dylan's "going electric".[93] but when asked in 2001 about how he recalled his "objections" to the electric style, he said:

I couldn't understand the words. I wanted to hear the words. It was a great song, "Maggie's Farm," and the sound was distorted. I ran over to the guy at the controls and shouted, "Fix the sound so you can hear the words." He hollered back, "This is the way they want it." I said "Damn it, if I had an axe, I'd cut the cable right now." But I was at fault. I was the MC, and I could have said to the part of the crowd that booed Bob, "you didn't boo Howlin' Wolfyesterday. He was electric!" Though I still prefer to hear Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father's old term.[94]Repudiation of Stalin

In 1982 Seeger performed at a benefit concert for Poland's Solidarity resistance movement. His biographer David Dunaway considers this the first public manifestation of Seeger's decades-long personal dislike of communism in its Soviet form.[95] In the late 1980s Seeger also expressed disapproval of violent revolutions, remarking to an interviewer that he was really in favor of incremental change and that "the most lasting revolutions are those that take place over a period of time."[95] In his autobiography Where Have All the Flowers Gone (1993, 1997, reissued in 2009), Seeger wrote, "Should I apologize for all this? I think so." He went on to put his thinking in context:

In a 1995 interview, however, he insisted that "I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it."[99] In recent years, as the aging Seeger began to garner awards and recognition for his lifelong activism, he also found himself criticized once again for his opinions and associations of the 1930s and 1940s. In 2006, David Boaz—Voice of America and NPR commentator and president of the libertarianCato Institute—wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian, entitled "Stalin's Songbird" in which he excoriated The New Yorker andThe New York Times for lauding Seeger. He characterized Seeger as "someone with a longtime habit of following the party line" who had only "eventually" parted ways with the CPUSA. In support of this view, he quoted lines from the Almanac Singers' May 1941 Songs for John Doe, contrasting them darkly with lines supporting the war from Dear Mr. President, issued in 1942, after the United States and the Soviet Union had entered the war.[100][101]

In 2007, in response to criticism from a former banjo student—historian Ron Radosh, a former Trotskyitewho now writes for the conservative National Review—Seeger wrote a song condemning Stalin, "Big Joe Blues":[102] "I'm singing about old Joe, cruel Joe. / He ruled with an iron hand. /He put an end to the dreams / Of so many in every land. / He had a chance to make / A brand new start for the human race. / Instead he set it back / Right in the same nasty place. / I got the Big Joe Blues. / Keep your mouth shut or you will die fast. / I got the Big Joe Blues. / Do this job, no questions asked. / I got the Big Joe Blues."[103] The song was accompanied by a letter to Radosh, in which Seeger stated, "I think you’re right, I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R [in 1965]."[98]Selected discographyMain article: Pete Seeger discographyRelease dateAlbum titleRecord label1954 The Pete Seeger Sampler Folkways Records1954 How to Play a 5-String Banjo (instruction) Folkways Records1955 Bantu Choral Folk Songs Folkways Records1955 The Folksinger's Guitar Guide (Instruction) Folkways Records1955 Birds, Beasts, Bugs and Little Fishes & Birds, Beasts, Bugs and Bigger Fishes (for Children) Folkways Records1956 Love Songs for Friends and Foes Folkways Records1956 With Voices Together We Sing Folkways Records1957 American Ballads Folkways Records1958 Gazette, Vol. 1 Folkways Records1959 American Play Parties Folkways Records1960 Champlain Valley Songs Folkways Records1960 At The Village Gate Folkways Records1961 Story Songs Columbia Records1962 12-String Guitar as Played by Lead Belly Folkways Records1963 We Shall Overcome Columbia Records1964 Broadsides – Songs and Ballads Folkways Records1964 Songs of Struggle and Protest, 1930–50 Folkways Records1966 God Bless The Grass Columbia Records1966 Dangerous Songs!? Columbia Records1967 Waist Deep In The Big Muddy And Other Love Songs Columbia Records1968 Wimoweh and Other Songs of Freedom and Protest Folkways Records1973 Rainbow Race Columbia Records1974 Banks of Marble and Other Songs Folkways Records1979 Circles & Seasons Warner Bros. Records1980 God Bless the Grass Folkways Records1989 Traditional Christmas Carols Smithsonian Folkways1990 American Folk Songs for Children Smithsonian Folkways1990 Folk Songs for Young People Smithsonian Folkways1991 Abiyoyo and Other Story Songs for Children Smithsonian Folkways1992 American Industrial Ballads (Reissue of 1956 album) Smithsonian Folkways1993 Darling Corey/Goofing-Off Suite Smithsonian Folkways1996 Pete Living Music Records1998 Birds, Beasts, Bugs and Fishes (Little and Big) Smithsonian Folkways1998 If I Had a Hammer: Songs of Hope and Struggle Smithsonian Folkways1998 Headlines and Footnotes: A Collection of Topical Songs Smithsonian Folkways2000 American Folk, Game and Activity Songs Smithsonian Folkways2002 American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 1 Smithsonian Folkways2003 American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 2 Smithsonian Folkways2004 American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 3 Smithsonian Folkways2006 American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 4 Smithsonian Folkways2007 American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 5 Smithsonian Folkways2008 At 89Appleseed Recordings2009 Pete Seeger at Bard Collegecredited to "Ono Okoy and the Banshees", a student performance art group dedicated to "preserving the footsteps of Pete Seeger" by singing folk music and recording his footsteps. Appleseed Recordings2009 American Favorite Ballads, The Complete Collection Vol. 1–5 Smithsonian Folkways

In 2001, Appleseed release "If I Had a Song: The Songs of Pete Seeger, Vol. 2." In 2003, it issued the double-CD Seeds: The Songs of Pete Seeger, Volume 3, the final set in its trilogy of releases celebrating Seeger's music.

In April 2006 Bruce Springsteen released a collection of folk songs associated with Seeger's repertoire, titled, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (which contained no songs actually composed by Seeger). Springsteen and his band also toured to sellout crowds in a series of concerts based on those sessions. He had previously performed the Seeger staple, "We Shall Overcome", on Where Have All the Flowers Gone.

In the 1970s Harry Chapin released a song dedicated to Seeger called "Old Folkie".Awards

From Seeger Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Pete Seeger

"Some may find them [songs] merely diverting melodies. Others may find them incitements to Red revolution. And who will say if either or both is wrong? Not I."[114]"I like to say I'm more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other."[115]"Technology will save us if it doesn't wipe us out first."[116]"I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it thanChristianity is what the churches make of it. But if by some freak of history communism had caught up with this country, I would have been one of the first people thrown in jail."[99]"When I am very hungry, nothing satisfies me more than a heaping plate of fried clams with tartar sauce, coleslaw, and fries.""I certainly should apologize for saying that Stalin was a hard driver rather than a very cruel leader. I don't speak out about a lot of things. I don't talk about slavery. A lot of white people in America could apologize for stealing land from the Indians and enslaving Africans. Europe could apologize for worldwide conquest. Mongolia could apologize for Genghis Khan. But I think the thing to do is look ahead."[98]"There is hope for the world." – in Pete Seeger: The Power of Song."We sang about Alabama 1955, / But since 9-11, we wonder, will this world survive? / The world learned a lesson from Dr. King: / We can survive, we can, we will, and so we sing – // Don’t say it can’t be done, / The battle's just begun. / Take it from Dr. King, / You too can learn to sing, / So drop the gun."[117]"I believe God is everywhere."[118]"Singing with children in the schools has been the most rewarding experience of my life." – Seeger, October 17, 2009, at community concert in Beacon, New York"I usually quote Plato, who said: It is very dangerous to allow the wrong kind of music in the republic."[119]From others

Jim Musselman (founder of Appleseed Recordings), longtime friend and record producer for Pete Seeger:He was one of the few people who invoked the First Amendment in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA). Everyone else had said the Fifth Amendment, the right against self-incrimination, and then they were dismissed. What Pete did, and what some other very powerful people who had the guts and the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the committee and say, "I'm gonna invoke the First Amendment, the right of freedom of association...."...I was actually in law school when I read the case of United States v. Seeger, and it really changed my life, because I saw the courage of what he had done and what some other people had done by invoking the First Amendment, saying, "We're all Americans. We can associate with whoever we want to, and it doesn't matter who we associate with." That's what the founding fathers set up democracy to be. So I just really feel it's an important part of history that people need to remember."[116]

"This song is the one that I first heard Pete Seeger singing. He tells me that it was written by a four-year-old boy in Russia. And it's just got four lines and it's been translated into a number of languages."See alsoList of banjo playersList of peace activistsTom Winslow – Clearwater singer and songwriterNotes